Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1887-04-22


anxious how they trust you with a bale OF
goods? Have the men whose names were
down in the commercial agency A before
they entered the society been going down
, since in commercial standing? Then look
out. You and every day know Of CONNER
cial establishments going to ruin through the
social excuses of one or two members, their
fortune beaten to death with ball players,
bat or cut amidships with the front PROV of
the regatta, or going down under the swift
hoofs of the fast horses, or drowned in the
large potations of cognac or Monongahela
That secret society was the Loeb Earn. Their
business was the Vile du Havre. They
struck, and the Vile du Havre went underl
The third test by which you may know
whether the society to which you belong is
good or bad is this: What is its effect on your
sense of moral and religious obligation? Now,
if should take the names of all the people in
this audience this morning and put them on a
roll, and then should lay that roll back of
this organ, and 100 years from now some one
should take that roll and call it from A to q,
there would not one of you answer. l say
that any society that makes me forget that
fact is bad society. When 1 go to Chicago
| am sometimes perplexed at Buffalo, as
suppose many travellers are, as to whether it
is better to take the Lake Shore route or the
Michigan Central, equally expeditions and
equally safe, getting to their destination at
the same time. But suppose that hear that
on one route the track is torn up, the bridges
are down and the switches are unlocked, it
will not take me great while to decide which
road to take.
Now, here are two roads in the futlire-the
Christian and the unchristian, the safe and
the unsafe Any institution or any associa-
ton that confuses my ideas in regard to that
fact is a bad institution and bad association.
I had prayers before I joined that society,
did I have them afterward? attended the
house of God before connected myself with
that union, do Rabsent myself from religious
influences? Which would you rather have
in your hand when you come to die--a pack
Of cards or a Bibles Which would you rather
have pressed to your lips in the closing
moment-the cup of Belshazzarean wassail or
the ehslice of Christian comnlunion2 Who
would you rather lave Cor s-est,s pal'healgfs--
the elders of Christian church or the COM
panions whose conversation was full Of slang
and innuendo? Who would you rather have
for your eternal companions those men who s
spend their evenings betting, gambling,
swearing, carousing and telling vile stories,
Lord tooks Oh. you would not have been
away so much nights, would you, if you had
known she was going away SO soon? Dear
me, your house. has never been the same
place since. Your wife has never frightened
up, she has never got over it. She never will
get over it. How long the evenings are with
no one to put to bed, and no one to whom to
tell the beautiful Bible stogies.
What pity it is that you cannot spend
more evenings at home in trying to help her
bear that sorrow. You can never drown
that grief in the wine cup. You can never
break away from the little arms that used 70
be flung around your neck when she lsee to
say: "Papa, do stay With essSo-nigdt. DO
stay with me Tonight You VIII never be
able to wipe away from your lips the dying
kiss of your little girl. The fascination of
bad secret society is so great that sometimes
a man has turned his back on his home when
his child was dying of scarlet fever. He
went away. Before he got back at midnight
the eyes had been closed, the undertaken had
done his work, and the wife, worn out with
three weeks watching, lay unconscious in
the next room. Then the returned father
comes upstairs, and he sees the cradle gone
and the windows up, and says: "What is the
matter2" On the Judgment day he Will lind
out what was the matter.
Oh man astray, God help youi am going
to make very stout rope. You know that
sometimes ropemaker will take very small
threads and wind them together until after
a while they become ship cable. And am
going to take some very small, delicate
threads and wind them together until they
make very stout rope. I will take all the
memories of the marriage day-a thread of
louobta1. q thread of liUht a. thread of
music, thread of banqueting, thread of
congratulation, and I twist them together
and I have one strand.
Then l take a thread of the hour of the first
advent in your house, thread of the dark
ness that preceded, and a thread of the light
that followed; andsa thread of the beautiful
scarf that little child used to wear when she
bounded out at eventide to greet you; and
then a thread of the beautiful dress in which
you laid her away for the resurrecJion;. and
then twist all these threads together, and
have another strand. Then I take thread
of the scarlet robe of a suffering Christ, and
a thread of the white raiment Of your loved
ones before the throne, and a string of the
harp cherubic and string of the heart sera-
phic, and I twist them all together, and
have third strand "Oh," you say. Heither
strand is enough to hold fast world" No;
I will take these strands and will twist them
together, and one end of that rope l will
fasten not to the communion table, for it
shall be removed; not to pillar of the organ,
for that will crumble in the ages; but wind
it round and round the cross of sympathiz-
ing Christ, and, having fastened one end of
the rope to the cross, | throw the other end to
YOU Lay hold of It'll Pull for your lifel Pull
for Heaven!